Concert Tickets for You. Yes, You.

Haven’t done a concert ticket giveaway in a while, my bad. So let’s change that right now.

enter, enter, enter!

I’ve got two pair of tickets for the Ziggy Marley concert at The Mount in Bushkill on June 15, so feel free to go ahead and start entering now. A requirement of the contest should be to make you guess at how many times I accidentally type “Bob Marley” over the next two weeks of the contest. But I’ll save myself the embarrassment of that.

Normal PopRox contest rules and entry procedures are in effect:

–Entries are accepted electronically only, so you’ll have to email your entry in to me, Facebook message me or DM me on Twitter. Just include your name, town, age and your daytime contact information. Umm, make sure you read that part twice. You’d be amazed at how many people just send me an e-mail with “pick me!!!!” in the subject line and nothing in the rest of the email. And they believe it constitutes an entry. It does not. Deadline to enter is June 13 at 2 p.m. Feel free to share the this or the Facebook link with your friends, the more entries I get, the better.

–One entry per person, per e-mail address. If I get two entries from the same e-mail, I’m deleting them both.

–Whichever message method you choose is the only way you can enter. If you email your entry in, you cannot Facebook it in too. If I get an email entry and a Facebook entry, I’ll be deleting the Facebook entry. That means instead of getting two entries through Facebook, you’ll only get one entry through email.

–Please know that you can go if you enter. The tickets will be at will call waiting for you if you win.

Good luck!

Links, a lot of which are leftover from last week but that I thought were interesting:

seeing as these pics are almost always scantily clad women, figured i'd throw the ladies a bone today. wait, scratch that, "figured i'd throw out this picture." much better.

Everyone knew something had to be up with GI Joe moving to next March from its previous, cushy little summer debut later this month. As it turns out, there is. In true Hollywood fashion, the studio wants to change the movie around to leave open the possibility of Channing Tatum actually coming back in future installments. Let’s just say that would have been hard unless there was something along the lines of a Dallas-esque dream sequence for the third. But since Tatum has already opened two big, extremely different movies this year, 21 Jump Street and The Vow, the GI Joe people decided it might not be the best idea to cut ties with him. So, they’re shooting some more scenes so that when he blows up, he probably only kinda blows up.

Another curious decision that seems to come with little or no explanation: Spartacus is ending its run after its third season. Weird seeing as it’s the show put Starz on the map as a legitimate pay-TV service that can churn out quality, original programming that can also draw a big audience. It was the kind of show that you’d imagine any TV network — pay or otherwise — would run into the ground and squeeze every last dime out of it that it could. Something is fishy here. My only guess is that in the TV business, the fourth season is when the prices go up on the talent. Most shows sign deals with its actors for three years, and when it’s successful, the network has to pony up with huge raises across the board in its fourth season. Maybe Starz just had no desire to pay the type of money it would have required to keep the show on the air. I’m starting to wonder if this is the beginning of a trend when it comes to renewing shows past a third season, or whether they might try extending the lengths of initial contracts, or whether you might see more networks just say, “Meh” when it comes to going to a fourth season and beyond to middling shows. Even though Spartacus was not middling. Let’s start the “Save Spartacus!!!” Facebook group now, shall we?

we'd be silly and shortsighted not to be worried about raising hope.

We’re not even into actual summer, but sure, let’s start worrying about whether our favorite shows are coming back in 2013-14. Why not? Why bother enjoying something when you can spend that time more usefully by stressing out over whether it’s the last season? Of the 13 shows mentioned, here are my biggest worries:

1. Community. It’s gone, and it might not even make it through the 13 episodes ordered for the upcoming season.

2. The Office. The biggest surprise for me of the Upfronts was that NBC didn’t announce this as the last year for The Office. This is the antithesis of Spartacus, this is NBC wringing the last drop of blood from this rock.

3. Raising Hope. Third season alert! But that also means it will only need one more season to get into syndication. I have a feeling it tanks at 8 p.m. Tuesdays. Since it already barely has a pulse, tanking would be a death knell for the show.

4. Parenthood. Still amazed it’s made it this long.

5. CSI: NY. Just kidding. No one gives a crap about this show.

if you dare.

More blood from a stone, only if the stone is actually a living, breathing moose with an endless amount of blood or something. Marvel (and Disney, of course) are coming out with an Avengers box set in the fall that features all of the Avengers movies up to now that probably got every comic book geek at least a little aroused. But why would anyone buy this now? One of the suckiest things is buying any DVD box set, then being surprised by more movies come out. Not even new technologies, just new movies. I thought I was pretty safe buying the Die Hard box set in, like, 2000. Then the new “ultimate” set came out in 2007 when Live Free or Die Hard came out. C’mon! Although it also worked in my favor when my Indiana Jones box set doesn’t include effign Crystal Skull. But if you know there will be more in the series, why would you buy the box set now? In this Avengers series, just in the next two years there will be THREE new movies, then another Avengers in 2015. That fall, there will be another box set of all the movies with new and improved bonus features that Disney will make you think you need or else you’ll have to hand in your nerd card. I’ll wait, thanks.

when the highlight of your major awards show is elizabeth banks, it's time for retooling

I watched the MTV Movie Awards for about 30 seconds last night, started contemplating sticking my head in an oven, and quickly punched in a bunch of buttons on my remote under the notion that anything would be better. And yeah, The Weather Channel was better. It’s bad enough to hear the ridiculous cackling and constant screaming of the fans, but the level of publicity whoring that goes on probably is unequaled. The only people that show up are people with a summer movie coming out, and they’re being forced to go by the studio. It’s insane. And it’s insufferable, especially since you’re asking comedic actors to be funny on cue. So you get awkward exchanges of actors trying to be funny, only they’re not, but everyone in the audience is laughing. And then there is always a random crowd shot with a celebrity around the status of, say, Jon Cryer, just doubled over in laughter at whatever unfunny thing was just said. Actually, that part is pretty funny.

Andy Samberg is gone from SNL, which we kinda already knew. But he confirmed it over the weekend as he tried to tell people with a straight face, “See That’s My Boy, I swear, it’s funny. C’mon, why are you laughing, it is! What, you think Vanilla Ice can’t be a funny movie???” Anyway, that just leaves unconfirmed one of the three rumored departees — Jason Sudeikis, who apparently said he was going to decide over the summer. Well lookie here, wouldn’t you know it? He’s got a big movie coming out in Aug. 10, Will Ferrell’s The Campaign. When he announces on Aug. 1 or so that he’s not coming back to SNL, you can add yet another way of people getting publicity for their movies — by saying they’re leaving a TV institution.

Not sure if I can comfortably make this claim, but I’m gonna go for it anyway: I’m the only person between the ages of 35 and 40 who, when finding out last night that Richard Dawson died immediately thought to myself “The guy from Hogan’s Heroes!!!” Pretty sure every other person in that age bracket associated him with Family Feud or maybe Running Man. Not me, I revert back to mid-60s sitcoms, despite Family Feud being a nightly staple in my house growing up. Surprising he didn’t die from “kick to the head by a really, really angry guy after Dawson frenched his wife on national TV.”

What’s more surprising? That there is a story about Al Jarreau cancelling concerts in France because of an illness, which means it’s constituted as news? Or the fact that the story makes no mention that he sang the theme to Moonlighting? If I were him, I’d frame that story. That has to be the first time since 1984 he’s had anything written about him that doesn’t include the words “Moonlighting” or “Bruce Willis” in the story. And now, because it’s in your head:

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